Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker 3)

“You possessed him.”

The word hung between them while Lily tried to decide if Rowan was censuring her or not. She refused to get defensive. “I took nothing from him. I even tried to comfort him a little, which is why I think he sensed me,” she said plainly. “There was no other way to jump us.”

He sighed and nodded. “Let’s just hope the rest of them don’t find out,” he said, and focused on her injuries. “These don’t look too bad.”

She gritted her teeth to keep the pain at bay as he peeked through one of the burn holes on her dress. “I want to speak with Alaric as soon as I can,” she said.

“I’ll see to it,” he replied.

Carrick had been riding hard for three days. The mount Lillian had given him was a tame Woven—part horse, part something with scales. It was called a runner. Carrick had no idea what the non-horse part was, and he hadn’t asked.

The runner’s dagger teeth and the reptilian feel of its bl

ack hide had made him a little hesitant at first, but it rode like a regular horse and he’d gotten the hang of it soon enough. The thing hadn’t needed food or water until that morning. Carrick had fed it a raccoon, which it swallowed whole, and then they’d been on their way. Efficient.

Carrick had left Lillian’s army on her orders and backtracked to find Alaric’s. As his silent mount picked over the trail, Carrick noticed how differently a city army traveled from an Outlander tribe. Lillian’s tightly packed army had trampled everything in their path, leaving a swath of dead bodies and spoiled land in their wake. The Outlander army fanned out, traveled lighter, and killed less and died less along the way. Carrick had to really look to find them as they slipped from hollow to vale, riding spread out by day and sleeping in their camouflage tents by night. But he was an Outlander like them. He knew how to look.

Yet as observant as Carrick was, the thing he was looking for had eluded him so far. Now that Lily was back in this world and had pledged to join Lillian, Carrick had been given his old orders again. Find the last bomb and dismantle it.

There used to be two. Now there was only one. Carrick had asked about the other, but Lillian hadn’t answered him.

He’d been annoyed that one of her other legmen had taken care of it, mostly because he guessed it had to be one of those pompous Walltop soldiers. Carrick was used to being looked at with distaste, whether it was for his stringy hair, his unnerving stare, or the blood under his fingernails that never seemed to entirely wash away before he found himself wrist deep in it again. But even the most squeamish sidestepping that was done to avoid crossing his path was done with a certain level of respect.

Walltop soldiers were different. They regarded all Outlanders (except maybe his half brother, the legendary Lord Fall) with a disdain that lacked the fear that Carrick was accustomed to. Unfortunately Carrick could do nothing to teach them otherwise. His Lady Witch simply wouldn’t have it. She was overly fond of Walltop for reasons she would not disclose to him.

Carrick rode into a copse of trees and saw some signs of Alaric’s tribe—nicked bark on the side of a hickory tree and two ruts through the maidenhair ferns where one of the heavier armored carts had passed. This particular cart had caught Carrick’s attention because its drovers seemed to mostly travel at night. Carrick had a hunch it was the armored cart he was looking for, but he hadn’t gotten a look at it yet.

He rode fast across the open ground and slowed when he reached the cover of a forest. He dismounted and started scanning the ground. His mount hissed softly. Carrick looked up in time to stop the first blow, but he was overpowered and knocked out before he could make contact with Lillian.

Lily floated in a wooden tub of cold spring water. Rowan had sprinkled some kind of herb in it that smelled like thyme and lemon and a few drops of something that tingled.

Her new tattoos were chilly under her skin. The blisters from the pyre had shrunk, and as Lily watched, the red welts on her wrists from the shackles were disappearing. She felt tired, but it was the pleasant feeling of drained muscles, not the pounding head and nausea that usually dogged her after going to the pyre. She tipped her head back in the tub and just let herself float.

She could hear Rowan’s voice outside the tent. He was explaining the situation in Cherokee to a handful of baffled Outlanders who couldn’t understand how over ten thousand tenderfooted city folk had managed to appear in the woods without making a sound. Outlanders are not used to being taken unawares. She smiled to herself as she listened to his overly patient tone. He hated repeating himself. She heard Caleb take over when Rowan had finished and then she heard the crowd outside her tent disperse. Her mechanics would stay close to her through the night to guard her, although Lily knew they didn’t really need to. Almost all of these braves were her claimed, and she’d already explained her strange return to them in mindspeak, even though most of them had no concept of teleportation.

Rowan ducked into the tent with a clenched jaw. Lily laughed.

“It’s not funny,” he said, repressing a smile. “The Elders are angry you brought so many tunnel folk and ranch hands.”

“They’re collectively calling themselves ‘below folk,’ by the way, and I don’t blame the Elders for not liking them,” she said. “But at least the braves are happy I’m here.” She rolled over in her cool bath, hearing laughter and the beginning of a song a few campfires away.

“Are you kidding? They’re ecstatic you’re here. They feel like they can actually survive this war now,” Rowan said, kneeling down next to the tub. “You’re not the problem, the below folk are. They hate the Outlanders for what Chenoa did to them, and there’ve already been a few serious fights. The Elders are worried the fighting is going to turn to killing soon.”

Lily frowned, remembering. Chenoa had used the women living in the subway tunnels to smuggle the radioactive materials from her lab at Lillian’s college to the Outlands, but she never explained to the women how dangerous those materials were, probably to keep their contents secret. Lily had seen the result.

“They have every right to be angry,” she said quietly.

“Of course they do,” Rowan replied. “That only makes it worse.” He picked up a bowl and started pouring water over Lily’s back. “The ranch hands are a rough bunch, and most of them have family ties to the women who died transporting Chenoa’s dust.”

Lily knew exactly what kind of men the ranch hands were. Some of them would have been good people if their lives hadn’t been so hard, but all of them had done something to earn a place on the ranches. These weren’t just petty thieves. Lily didn’t trust them.

“I won’t let them hurt anyone else,” she promised.

“How are you going to stop them?” Rowan asked delicately, unwilling to bring up the touchy subject of possession again.

“I’ll tell them right now that if there’s any more violence tonight, I’ll be their judge and jury in the morning. They can’t lie to me, and my punishment will make whatever the crime was pale in comparison,” she said. She trained her inner eye on the minds of the ranch hands and sent them her warning. “There. It’s done.”

The sound of the water trickling over her skin seemed to fill up the tent as she watched him. He kept his eyes on his task as the tension built.